Mass Shootings, the NRA and the Samurai Code of Honor

Aurora Shooter James Holmes

Lunatics who engage in mass shootings  are not as "looney" as most of us might think.  Their damaged brains feed off the messages society sends to everyone.  Only, the directives become distorted and inflated in such grotesque ways that the rest of us cannot possibly see ourselves in the shattered mirror shards of the perpetrators' minds. 

Let's,  for instance, look at the term  "honor."  When did America switch its definition of the word from "the courage to do what is right" to the cowardice to haul around a semi-automatic weapon?  What code of honor is the National Rifle Association (NRA) protecting when it so beats down politicians of both parties, that even the Democratic president of the United States cowers in its shadow.

To be manly is not to metaphorically extend the length of one's phallic organ by brandishing a rifle.  It is rather something quite different, which I find encapsulated in the word "bushido," meaning the "way of the warrior" in Japanese. It originates from the samurai moral code and stresses self-discipline, loyalty , physical bravery and the use of violence tempered by wisdom and serenity. 

Maybe I've been watching too many of my ten year old son's kung fu movies.  Or maybe the NRA has not been watching enough of them.